Interference (novel)
|writer= Lawrence Miles |publisher= BBC Books |cover=Black Sheep |release date= 2 August 1999 |format= 2 paperback books; 27 chapters, 309 pages and 27 chapters, 314 pages |isbn= ISBN 0-563-55580-7, ISBN 0-563-55582-3 |prev= Autumn Mist (novel) |next= The Blue Angel (novel) }} Interference was a Doctor Who novel written by Lawrence Miles, published in two books: Shock Tactic and The Hour of the Geek. It featured the Eighth Doctor and Fitz Kreiner alongside the Third Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith; it was also 's final novel appearance and introduced Compassion. This novel builds and explores Faction Paradox, introduced in Alien Bodies. It was the only two-part novel ever published as part of a Doctor Who novel range, and it was Lawrence Miles' penultimate contribution to the BBC Books range. This novel is split into two distinct-but-linked stories, "What Happened on Earth" and "What Happened on Dust". Sarah Jane Smith appears in both of these, with the "Dust" section occurring during the Third Doctor's time and "Earth" occurring during the Eighth Doctor's time. Publisher's summary Shock Tactic Five years ago, was just a schoolgirl from . Of course, that was before she met up with the Doctor and found out that her entire life had been stage-managed by a time-travelling voodoo cult. Funny how things turn out, isn't it? Now Sam's back in her own time, fighting the good fight in a world of political treachery, international subterfuge, and good old-fashioned depravity. But she's about to learn the first great truth of the universe: that however corrupt and amoral your own race might be, there's always someone in the galaxy who can make you look like a beginner. Ms Jones has just become a minor player in a million-year-old power struggle... and as it happens, so has the Doctor. Both of him, actually. The Hour of the Geek They call it the Dead Frontier. It's as far from home as the human race ever went, the planet where mankind dumped the waste of its thousand-year empire and left its culture out in the sun to rot. But while one Doctor faces both his past and his future on the Frontier, another finds himself on Earth in 1996, where the seeds of the empire are only just being sown. The past is meeting the present, cause is meeting effect, and the TARDIS crew is about to be caught in the crossfire. The Third Doctor. The Eighth Doctor. Sam. Fitz. Sarah Jane Smith. Soon, one of them will be dead; one of them will belong to the enemy; and one of them will be something less than human... Chapter titles Shock Tactic * Foreman's World: Morning on the First Day * What Happened on Earth (Part One) ** 1: Gibberish (introducing Mr Llewis and all his neuroses) ** 2: One of the Good People (how Sam Jones got to be where she is today) ** Travels with Fitz (I) ** 3: A Day in the Life (18 August, somewhere a long way from London) ** 4: Four Rooms (running around, getting captured, escaping, etc.) ** Travels with Fitz (II) ** 5: Unfortunate Episodes (Sam finally gets into television) ** 6: Dog Out of a Machine (six characters in search of some exits) ** Travels with Fitz (III) ** 7: The Smith Report (getting to the bottom of things, the old‐fashioned way) ** 8: Another Day in the Life (19 August, somewhere a long way from London) ** Travels with Fitz (IV) ** 9: Definitions (Sam learns a thing or two about the Remote, while Alan Llewis just gets the picture) ** 10: Nowhere is Better than Here (at last, Anathema) ** Travels with Fitz (V) ** 11: One Girl and Her Ogron (the beginning of a beautiful friendship) ** 12: Faster than the Speed of Dark (Ancient Gallifrey: The Mini‐series) ** Travels with Fitz (VI) ** 13: The Last Day in the Life (20 August somewhere a long way from London) * Foreman's world: Afternoon on the First Day * What Happened on Dust (Part One) ** 1: Moving Target (it’s always High Noon somewhere in the universe) ** 2: Explain Earlier (how times change) ** 3: Patterns in the Dust (the Doctor takes coffee while history unfolds) ** 4: The Show (Sarah Jane Smith is not amused) ** 5: A Fistful of Meanwhiles (what everyone was doing just before the big fight started) * Foreman's World: Evening on the First Day The Hour of the Geek to be added Plot What Happened on Earth to be added What Happened on Dust to be added Characters What Happened on Earth * Eighth Doctor * * Fitz Kreiner * Sarah Jane Smith * K9 Mark III * Guest * Compassion * Kode * Badar * I.M. Foreman * Alan Llewis * Coldicott * Lost Boy * Mother Mathara * Laura Tobin * Iris Wildthyme What Happened on Dust * Third Doctor * Sarah Jane Smith * Magdelana Bishop * I.M. Foreman * Father Kreiner References Books * In the UN's building in Geneva, Fitz finds a book with UNISYC seals called Theoretical Monsters: A Credibility Test. It lists: :* The Cybermen :* The Xxxxxxxxxlanthi (mind-chewers from the Fifth Universe) :* Gell Guards :* Kalekani (which use a terraforming virus on biospheres to replace all land with flats and slopes of green, On Earth it's called "golf".) * Kode reads Genetic Politics Beyond the Thirdzone while in the TARDIS. * Sarah finds a magazine in the TARDIS called House and TARDIS. * The Doctor tries to read The Time Machine once an incarnation. Books from the real world * The character of the Devil in The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov was based on the Doctor (in his third incarnation or earlier). Cults * Upon finding himself in 2593/2594, Fitz decides to join the Faction Paradox. Culture * I.M. Foreman has recently read The Lord of the Rings. The Doctor * When the Doctor was younger some of his friends learnt the skill of internal chronometry. * The Eighth Doctor spends ten days trapped in Saudi Arabia. * The Third Doctor is shot by Magdelana Bishop with a shotgun and regenerates on Dust. In the process, not only is his history altered, but he is infected by Faction Paradox's biodata virus. The Doctor's items * UNIT uses the space-time telegraph to contact the Doctor. * The Doctor left the space-time telegraph with the UN in the 1970s or the 1980s. * There's a street aboard the TARDIS along which several thousand volumes of the TARDIS Instruction Manual are kept. Drugs and medicines * Kode smokes cigarettes while on Earth but isn't quite sure why. Energy and radiation * K9 can detect artron energy. Exhibitions and conventions * COPEX has been running since at least 1992. It is an arms fair. * Sarah Jane Smith masquerades as "Sarah Bland", working for International Procurement Services to get into COPEX. Faction Paradox * The Justinian was the ship that originally brought the first settlers to Ordifica. It was used by the Faction Paradox to take them away from the colony prior to its destruction by the High Council. ::Laura Tobin, Guest and Fitz Kreiner were all together on this ship. * The Justinian is sent via a time jump to the late 18th century, Anathema; 1799 * The Faction Paradox leaves biosphere manipulation technology with the Remote in 1799. * A Faction Warship (created from the body of a Dæmon) travels to the planet Dust to deliver the Faction virus and watch as events unfold there. Foods and beverages * The Third Doctor gets hot coffee thrown in his face by Magdelana Bishop. Gallifrey * The order that IM Foreman was a part of devolved into the monk the Doctor knew on the hillside on Gallifrey. * I.M. Foreman operates I.M. Foreman's One-Species Nongenetically Engineered Travelling Show. * The Seal of Rassilon is an omniscate. Gallifreyan technology * Bowships are described/seen by Sam. They have "huge spikes fitted to the prows of the ships, glittering gold in the light from the nearest stars." * The TARDIS is modelled out of pure mathematics. It is a complex space-time event. Its very existence and position in relation to the rest of the continuum is just an intricate code series. * The Rassilon Imprimatur maps a Time Lord "on to the Vortex by numbers, linked to the heart of space-time by an umbilical cord of pure mathematics." * The Cold is the Time Lord warship's computer system. By releasing it, it detonates the ship (which is a planet-sized bomb) and therefore destroys the Earth. * During one of the narrative constructs Sam experiences in the Media, the Doctor mentions a time ring. Individual Gallifreyans and Time Lords * Regeneration away from a TARDIS is slow and clumsy. Groups * Compassion thinks the Faction told Tobin that the enemy came from Earth originally. Human politicians * According to the Doctor the order of American presidents is: Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Dering, Springsteen, Norris. * The order of British prime minister is: Heath, Thorpe, Williams, Thatcher, Major, Blair, Clarke. Individuals * Fitz Kreiner is twenty-nine years old when he arrives on Earth with the Doctor and Sam. He goes from 1996 to 2593 in the Cold. In 2593 he celebrates his 626th birthday. * It has been two years since Kode was remembered. * Badar is a journalist who was locked up. With the Doctor he discusses the Doctor's travels and they build a world of ideas that he can retreat into, to escape the torture he endures. On 20 August 1996 he is executed. * Magdelana Bishop is the assigned defender of the township on Dust. * Father Kreiner has the heads of several Time Lords on his walls, including the Master and the Rani (though one of them is the head of a clone). * Sam mentions wanting to see Fitz, saying, "We did have sex and everything," though adding, "It was a parallel-universe-alternative-reality kind of thing." * Iris Wildthyme makes a brief appearance in Sarah's Voodoo Economics documentary as UNIT's scientific advisor. * Fitz Kreiner joins the Faction Paradox and ends up becoming Father Kreiner. * Kode is is restored by the TARDIS using a remembrance tank to become what the TARDIS remembered Fitz to be. * The Doctor bought Sarah her stuffed owl at a jumble sale in Brighton in 1948. * Sarah can't remember the Doctor's regeneration properly. * Sarah isn't sure if she was on Dust. * Sarah reflects on the two incidents where she met the Doctor (or the things related to the Doctor) in 1983 and 1995. * After leaving Ordifica, Nathaniel Guest goes by the name of Guest while on Earth. * Laura Tobin used to crack her knuckles. She gave Fitz the nickname "code-boy". * Father Kreiner is who Fitz Kreiner became after a century (or more) with the Faction Paradox and the Remote. Locations * Fitz has an apartment in Augustine City on Ordifica. * The Eleven-Day Empire is the Faction Paradox's home base. * The Remote's home is called Anathema. * The Doctor's TARDIS was left in the city of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. * Anathema is the Remote's city, located on the side of a Time Lord warship. Objects * Father Kreiner has a glove made of dwarf star alloy. Organisations * There are Ghanaians, Iranians, Saudi Arabians, Indonesians, Russian Mafia and British at COPEX. * Lewis knows about "black" technology that C19 has. * UNISYC is being established. * UNIT, UNISYC, the ISC are holding some of the technological balance of power. * Order of the Rectangle, the Cult of the Black Sun and the Luminus were all created by the Faction Paradox. * Guest fronts the Remote's contingent to Earth to sell the Cold. Planets * Dust and Quiescia are on opposite sides of the Mutter's Spiral. * Ordifica is the planet on which Fitz is brought out of the Cold. * The Ogron home planet is located at coordinates 0110011 by C2. * Sarah and the Doctor have just left Quiescia when they arrive on Dust. Before that they were on Peladon. They're heading back to Earth at Sarah's request. * I.M. Foreman's show once stopped off on New Mars. * I.M. Foreman's favourite planet is Mars. Species * The Doctor states, "Trade-dependant races are quite common in this part of the galaxy. The Selachians are always trying to unload arms on planets like this one. The Mentors are even worse. And the Arcturans would sell their own souls, if they had any." * Guest, Compassion and Kode use Ogrons for security. * Sarah's memories of the Doctor are a bit fuzzy. She keeps getting her Krynoids mixed up with her Pescatons. TARDIS * The Doctor discusses I.M. Foreman's One-Species Nongenetically Engineered Travelling Show. Technology * The Remote's transmitters use block-transfer formulae. * According to Compassion (speaking to Sam), "You're not supposed to have transmats on Earth. Not in the twentieth century." * A court case was brought against Microsoft because of its software provided to the robots at the Festival of Ghana. Bill Gates is still apologising for his company's part in it and that it wasn't his fault the robots started killing people. * The Cold is quite possibly related to validium. * Sam uses binoculars (given to her by the Doctor) made in the Filipino Protectorate in 4993. The binoculars have lip-reading software on them. * Zoe picked up a mask of James Stewart at the Grand Festival of Zymymys Midamor. It's made of a memory polymer. * The Remote's receivers pump active temporal biodata into the colonists bodies. * The Cold is probably validium based. * Sarah used the Remote's "TARDIS tracker" to find the Doctor's TARDIS. * Faction Paradox warships are made from the bones of Daemons. * Sam Jones gets put in the Media. * K9 Mark III is made out of a ZX-81. Theories and concepts * Sarah mentions the "Blinovitch Limitation wotsit." Dates * Anathema 1799 is out of reach by the High Council. * Between 1799 and 1800 the Remote build the transmission tower on Anathema. * By 1801 on Anathema Fitz and the rest of the Remote are sterile. * The 20th century is when Earth starts to turn itself into a major galactic power. * The events on Dust occur a thousand years after the fall of the Earth Empire. Vehicles * Sarah's Land Rover has a computer system powered by I2 technology. * K9 can drive Sarah's Land Rover. * The Doctor has an S-reg Mini Metro parked in the TARDIS console room to replace his destroyed Volkswagen Beetle. Notes * The prose in this book shifts between conventional narrative to teleplay/scene breakdown. * According to Kate Orman on a internet question board, the working draft (dated November 1998) did not include the Third Doctor. Ask Kate Orman and Jonathan Blum - The Doctor Who Forum at Outpost Gallifrey (Page 2) (ezyboard membership required) * This is the first novel in the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures line to use the blue Doctor Who logo on its cover and spine. Before this it was a silver logo. * Sarah is using the alias "Sarah Bland."The alias "Bland" is a reference to Robin Bland, the pseudonym Robert Holmes created for his rewrite of Terrance Dicks' script for The Brain of Morbius.* Miles believed I.M. Foreman was "the last thing about the Doctor's past that needs dealing with before we can close this forever", and he used Foreman as "an exorcism of all the old hang-ups about Doctor Who". DWM 282 * Miles said "The point of Interference is that any solutions to human problems in the late 20th century will be cultural rather than political." * According to an interview Lawrence Miles gave in 2003, these books sold more than anything Miles had written previously. Continuity * Faction Paradox first appeared in PROSE: Alien Bodies. * Sam was put through the emotional and temporal wringer in PROSE: Unnatural History. That was a couple of months ago for Sam. * At the end of PROSE: Autumn Mist Sam told the Doctor the next time they landed on Earth close to her original time, she would be leaving him and the TARDIS. * The novel / story is continued in PROSE: Interference - Book Two. * The space time telegraph was first mentioned in TV: . * Lewis mentions the events of TV: , saying he remembers all the fuss from the 1980s and the worry over the new Z-bomb that could destroy the Earth. * I.M. Foreman shares a name with . (TV: ) * I.M. Foreman refers to bottle universes and the Time Lords using them as an escape route. This is some of the plot to PROSE: Dead Romance. * Sam's bad drug experience appears here. It was first mentioned in PROSE: . * The Doctor tells Badar about his imprisonment on Ha'olam. (PROSE: ) * Fitz recalls his indoctrination by the Chinese in PROSE: . * The Festival of Ghana is a reference to TV: . * appeared in PROSE: . * The Third Doctor has just left Quiescia (PROSE: Alien Bodies) after . (TV: ) * Sam sees s and the war against the Great Vampires. (TV: ) * Sam reflects that the Doctor has told her the 'real' story of Jack the Ripper, a possible reference to the events of PROSE: . * Sarah recalls being poisoned by the Cybermen. (TV: ) * The Doctor recalls and compares his imprisonment to his experiences in PROSE: . * PROSE: Alien Bodies was the first appearance of Faction Paradox. * Sam found out her life was a stage managed by the Faction Paradox and that a (sort of) alternate version of herself had sex with Fitz in PROSE: Unnatural History. * At the end of PROSE: Autumn Mist Sam told the Doctor the next time the TARDIS landed on Earth close to her time she would be leaving him. * PROSE: The Blue Angel is the next novel and the first novel to show Compassion as a genuine companion. * PROSE: The Ancestor Cell brings all that happens in this novel (and those in between) to a conclusion. * TV: shows validium and exactly what it is. * PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles attempts to explain / re-interpret many of the events that lead up to and followed this novel. * Sarah mentions mixing up Pescatons and Krynoids. They are from AUDIO: and TV: . * The two events Sarah thinks of in 1983 and 1995 are TV: and HOMEVID: respectively. * There is a reference to TV: with the dialogue, "Drop the sonic device, Time Lord." * There are some references to the Time Lords escaping to a universe in a bottle which is seen in PROSE: Dead Romance. * During Iris Wildthyme's interview she mentions a "space wheel" (TV: ) and people in Geneva wanting to put bases on the Moon, which would come to pass in TV: and . * Sarah and Sam swap companion stories, just as Rose and Sarah do in TV: . * As the Third Doctor regenerates, he says the same thing he did in TV: , "A tear, Sarah Jane?" * The Doctor promises Sarah Jane that he will attend her wedding, something he does in TV: . External links * * * [http://mysite.science.uottawa.ca/rsmith43/cloister/inte1.htm The Cloister Library: Interference - Book One] * [http://mysite.science.uottawa.ca/rsmith43/cloister/inte2.htm The Cloister Library: Interference - Book Two] Footnotes Category:Third Doctor novels Category:Sarah Jane Smith novels Category:Faction Paradox stories Category:1999 novels Category:Time Lord novels Category:Multi-Doctor novels Category:Stories set in 1996 Category:Stories set in London Category:Stories set in the Middle East Category:Ogron novels Category:Rassilon novels Category:UNIT novels Category:Stories set in 2593 Category:Stories set in 2594 Category:Stories set in 2596 Category:Stories set in 1799 Category:Stories set in 1800 Category:Stories set in 1801 Category:Stories set in the 38th century Category:Eighth Doctor Adventures novels Category:Past Doctor Adventures novels Category:Omega novels Category:Regeneration novels